A rain garden and an infiltration trench have been installed at the city-owned ‘Climate Resilient’ home and are currently being monitored for effectiveness. It is recommended that the City undertake a few more pilots across the City, particularly in areas of high clay soils to determine the effectiveness of various LID methods.

Education and Engagement

The draft Climate Change Adaptation Plan states that building a more resilient community will not be achieved through municipal actions alone. Community action needs to be significant if Windsor is to become a more resilient community. To achieve this the Community must be fully aware, engaged and understand why their individual actions are so crucial to the success of the Plan. Community engagement must be seen as a priority as 23 of the proposed actions in the draft adaptation plan speak to the need to educate, engage and build awareness for successful implementation.

Administration must seek new ways of reaching the community as public information sessions generally result in low engagement rates. New opportunities need to be explored for example creating of video or webinar series to help residents understand personal risk to basement flooding and actions to mitigate those risks or creating citizen science programs to further engage the community.

Opportunities for Integration (Adaptation and Mitigation)

Infrastructure Canada recently developed a Climate Lens document for all Infrastructure projects seeking grant funding of $10,000,000 or more. The Climate Lens is intended to incent behavioural change and consideration of climate impacts into the planning of infrastructure projects. By systematically evaluating each project’s GHG emissions and/or resilience to the impacts of climate change, project managers will become increasingly familiar with key considerations, risks, and mitigation strategies, which will facilitate better decision making in both current and future infrastructure projects.

Following Infrastructure Canada’s lead, the City of Windsor should seek opportunities to integrate climate change considerations into daily decision making. Though the primary intent of a project may not be to mitigate or adapt to climate change, there may be opportunities to ensure that projects don’t negatively impact GHG emission targets and minimize risk under climate change impacts.

This section identifies various opportunities to embed climate change considerations into municipal decisions. Integration helps ensure that decisions are not made without climate change considerations, therefore reducing risks posed by climate change or energy use.